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Sunday, 26 June 2016

Photorealist Tryout: Carson Grubaugh

...continued from Carson Grubaugh's Photorealist Tryout Part 1 and Part 2

CARSON GRUBAUGH:

Here are the "pencils" for the intro pages that Dave
had laid out. If we could post them and get any feedback he has or
changes he thinks need to be made before I ink-ink them that would be
fantastic.

Notes:

Snow will be added on top of the
final inked pages. I plan on having no border around the panels, so any
white will bleed into the gutters. I have the gutters set at 1/8 inch
but can modify them to make them consistent with the rest of the book if
you are using a different size.

This stage was drawn with
Mircons so I can scan them, print them in blue-line, and ink on top of
the print. This will save on erasing and keep the ink lines darker. The
final inking will be done with the Series 7 # 2, a Hunt 102 and maybe
the Gillott 290/1 so all of the lines will be much thinner and more
carefully applied.

Thanks to Jack VanDyke, the manager at
Local Heroes in Norfolk, VA, for letting me into the shop and posing for
all of the pictures. Perfect model. Great shop. Anyone in the Hampton
Roads area of VA should check it out.

I am moving from VA
to CA at the end of the week. When I get settled in I will have the rest
of the summer to work on inking these, if Dave thinks it is worth going
ahead with.

This is some really good shit in terms of illustration, but maybe needs something of a nudge to be a great page of comics. My specific criticism is that there's sort of a uniform density to the linework and tonal range that interrupts the narrative flow and also obscures any hierarchy of visual information, ie, what it is we're supposed to be focused on in each panel. I definitely look forward to seeing how this works with the Hunt & Gillott nibs.

Hi Carson! The phrase "less is more" comes to mind. My strongest suggestion would be to move from this stage to inking a copy of this with a thick marker and a white-out pen to get more of the idea of a comic store at night and the store owner spot-lit by the illumination of the computer screen. It's a real vice in photorealism to just keep adding densities of cross-hatching to communicate detail. It's not WRONG it just isn't what Raymond/Williamson is about. Each section of each panel of each page needs to be either white or black. That has to be the first thing that you see. What Dave Kopperman refers to as hierarchies of information.

NIGHT TIME - it doesn't look specifically like a night scene because there's no extreme contrast between LIGHT and DARK. It could be high noon and just a very detailed heavily cross-hatched Gerhard-style illustration.

FOCUS - You need to communicate more of the idea that we're going INTO the shop through the window and that what is apparent is a spotlit location that turns out to be the store owner bathed in the light of a computer screen. You can put some subordinate lights in, illuminating parts of the background but the more background detail that's visible, the less it looks like a night scene.

When I say a thick marker, I mean like a blunt-ended Sharpie. the illumination of the computer screen would throw a HUGE shadow behind the storeowner. Likewise, the view behind the storeowner should be mostly silhouette with just edges of the clothing visible. The urge is to preserve ALL of your really nice photorealism effects, like the stripes on the sleeve. If you're "inking" with a Sharpie, you can't do that. BIG shadows. Black in virtually all of the cars in front of the store and virtually all of the storefront except for the window. The fact that you can only see what's in front of the window will communicate NIGHT more effectively.

You should be able to see it as a night scene from a foot or two away and know that it's a row of storefronts, some lit up and some not. Err on the side of TOO black and TOO white and then walk it back to your detail.

Think Alex Toth at this stage. Extreme contrast geometric shapes, either white or black with very very sharp edges. Don't restrict yourself to what the scene actually looks like in the photo. Build something that communicates itself from a foot or two away BASED on the photo. Anything that helps the VISUAL INFORMATION side by blacking it in, black in it. White out on the same basis. All of the white needs to communicate BRIGHT light source. Not natural light, SPOTLIGHT light.

It's a beautiful piece of work. It's just too grey the way it is now, so you aren't getting full value for the time that you're putting in on it.

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